Data Caching

Data caching is about storing some PHP variable in cache and retrieving it later from cache. For this purpose, the cache component base class CCache provides two methods that are used in most of the time: set() and get().

To store a variable $value in cache, we choose a unique ID and call set() to store it:

Yii::app()->cache->set($id, $value);

The cached data will remain in the cache forever unless it is removed because of some caching policy (e.g. caching space is full and the oldest data are removed). To change this behavior, we can also supply an expiration parameter when calling set() so that the data will be removed from the cache after a certain period of time:

// keep the value in cache for at most 30 seconds
Yii::app()->cache->set($id, $value, 30);

Later when we need to access this variable (in either the same or a different Web request), we call get() with the ID to retrieve it from cache. If the value returned is false, it means the value is not available in cache and we should regenerate it.

$value=Yii::app()->cache->get($id);
if($value===false)
{
    // regenerate $value because it is not found in cache
    // and save it in cache for later use:
    // Yii::app()->cache->set($id,$value);
}

When choosing the ID for a variable to be cached, make sure the ID is unique among all other variables that may be cached in the application. It is NOT required that the ID is unique across applications because the cache component is intelligent enough to differentiate IDs for different applications.

Some cache storages, such as MemCache, APC, support retrieving multiple cached values in a batch mode, which may reduce the overhead involved in retrieving cached data. Starting from version 1.0.8, a new method named mget() is provided to exploit this feature. In case the underlying cache storage does not support this feature, mget() will still simulate it.

To remove a cached value from cache, call delete(); and to remove everything from cache, call flush(). Be very careful when calling flush() because it also removes cached data that are from other applications.

Tip: Because CCache implements ArrayAccess, a cache component can be used liked an array. The followings are some examples:

$cache=Yii::app()->cache;
$cache['var1']=$value1;  // equivalent to: $cache->set('var1',$value1);
$value2=$cache['var2'];  // equivalent to: $value2=$cache->get('var2');

1. Cache Dependency ¶

Besides expiration setting, cached data may also be invalidated according to some dependency changes. For example, if we are caching the content of some file and the file is changed, we should invalidate the cached copy and read the latest content from the file instead of the cache.

We represent a dependency as an instance of CCacheDependency or its child class. We pass the dependency instance along with the data to be cached when calling set().

// the value will expire in 30 seconds
// it may also be invalidated earlier if the dependent file is changed
Yii::app()->cache->set($id, $value, 30, new CFileCacheDependency('FileName'));

Now if we retrieve $value from cache by calling get(), the dependency will be evaluated and if it is changed, we will get a false value, indicating the data needs to be regenerated.

Below is a summary of the available cache dependencies:

• CFileCacheDependency: the dependency is changed if the file's last modification time is changed.

• CDirectoryCacheDependency: the dependency is changed if any of the files under the directory and its subdirectories is changed.

• CDbCacheDependency: the dependency is changed if the query result of the specified SQL statement is changed.

• CGlobalStateCacheDependency: the dependency is changed if the value of the specified global state is changed. A global state is a variable that is persistent across multiple requests and multiple sessions in an application. It is defined via CApplication::setGlobalState().

• CChainedCacheDependency: the dependency is changed if any of the dependencies on the chain is changed.

• CExpressionDependency: the dependency is changed if the result of the specified PHP expression is changed. This class has been available since version 1.0.4.